


Cat's Pajamas

by mightyscrub



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Mental Illness, domestic AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 06:11:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7879582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mightyscrub/pseuds/mightyscrub
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Domestic fluff au business.  "It occurred to him suddenly that he was going to have to explain to Adam why they had a cat in their house, and he really didn’t have a good reason."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cat's Pajamas

**Author's Note:**

> I asked for some prompts, and the ever fabulous Lis aka creamhearts @ tumbl and bigbosselot @ tweeter requested domestic bosselot
> 
> Here is some domestic bosselot ilu

John Sears tore his prescription out of its white paper packaging in the drugstore parking lot, stuffing the shreds and his receipt in his jacket pocket and squinting down at his little orange pill bottle between thick fingers. The pills were pretty big… but then, maybe his anxiety required something hefty. Seemed about right. He gave the bottle a little shake, fixating on the rattle.

The autumn sun was weak, diluted, and the tailored parking lot trees had lost their color. Everything was brown now, a little dead, but also a little deep. Adam tended to get depressed in this sort of weather, throwing back his own pills, but John secretly liked it. Colorful spring days could remind you of life’s vibrancy but days like this reminded you of its quiet textures.

He pocketed the pill bottle and started back to his truck. A chilly breeze made him snuffle in his beard, pulling himself closer together, his boots heavy footfalls, almost clumsy. Often John was mistaken for someone less adept. A hulking sloucher of a man. You wouldn’t guess he could creep his way through the wilderness with perfect precision and control, a sharpshooter to boot. But those were skills not exactly suited for civilian life anyway.

Halfway down the parking lot (he always parked at the back), he saw the cat.

It was a raggedy thing, an orange tabby with protruding ribs. It was hunched by a cart return, back arched, all spine. Passersby glanced at it with varying concern, but everybody left it alone.

John, however… well, he was a noticer of things. It was another of his skills.

And he liked cats.

His steps became gentler, and with ultimate casualness he approached the cat and lowered to his haunches beside it. It took a step back, but watched him. John offered a hand. The cat sniffed it.

A slow ruffle of the cat’s ears and they were quick friends. A good cat. It didn’t seem to know how to purr; it just exhaled in squeaky puffs through its nose and looked happy as John started rubbing both hands down its sides. His fingers picked at the matted fur, inspecting the pink skin underneath. No fleas, but there were some engorged ticks, including an unfortunate pair on the cat’s balls when it rolled over for belly scratches. John didn’t envy him that. He rubbed that emaciated belly with practiced roughness, the cat stretching his head out languidly.

Another chilly breeze sent a newspaper scraping across the asphalt.

Well.

Without thinking about it much, John scooped the cat up to his chest, cradling him in one large hand, and pushed himself back to standing.

“Let’s get the bugs off your balls,” he said. The cat curled up, toes in the air, and let John take him to his truck.

John had a weakness for good cats.

On the way to the pet store, he soothed the cat’s engine fear with a constant quiet rumble of nonsense conversation and a hand on his side. He called the cat Bugs.

He told Bugs about nice things. Like stew. He talked about Adam.

“We met in the military,” John explained. “He has a gun collection.”

Bugs puffed happy squeaks out of his nose.

x

He left Bugs in the car at PetCo, since the cat had fallen asleep, and went inside for the essentials.

Cat food. A mouse toy.

Flea and tick shampoo.

He winced at the price—why were animals so expensive?—and also the cashier kept trying hard not to stare at him. He knew what she was looking at. His glass eye. His real one was stark blue, and the fake one was a close approximation in color but it just gazed ahead blankly, slightly off-center, dead like a fish eye.

He figured it was pretty weird to look at, and he had some nasty scarring around it as well, so he didn’t blame her for being discomfited. But having someone notice him so acutely, pay attention to his face like this…

He could feel anxiety bubbling up in his chest. An iron fist on his heart, his pounding pulse hard against the palm, pressurized, ready to burst… A blush was creeping up the back of his neck.

He fumbled his debit card with a grumbled thanks and left as quickly as possible, head down.

Bugs was awake and waiting for him in the truck’s passenger seat. John poured out some food on the seat for him to eat and also to keep him off the dashboard as they started home.

Home.

He really wanted to be home right now. Just the thought that he didn’t have anywhere else to be today made his lungs work better.

He patted the munching cat absently as he drove.

x

Bugs did not enjoy his bath, but John was firm about it and the shampoo worked. The ticks fell right off in the water, and soon John was toweling off a bug-free albeit frazzled cat.

He poured him a salad bowl of food and another of water, and he even offered the toy mouse but Bugs was much more interested in feasting and then napping off the day’s adventures right there on the kitchen floor. John hovered around the center island watching him.

It occurred to him suddenly that he was going to have to explain to Adam why they had a cat in their house, and he really didn’t have a good reason.

He and Adam weren’t cut out for suburban life, but here they were in a quiet neighborhood anyway because it was infinitely cheaper than the city and gave John some nature in the backyard. They had their own creek back there. Or at least a creek that was half theirs. They were in a duplex, and Adam’s ongoing quiet rivalry with the neighbors was already the stuff of subdivision legend. John had never known that offering a gift of cookies could be a threat before meeting these particular neighbors. They didn’t like John and his social awkwardness. As such, Adam did not like them. And when Adam didn’t like someone, he was hell to deal with.

John was bracing for his own potential hell when Adam finally got home. The front door went straight into the kitchen, so Adam was only two steps in before he had a full view of both John at the counter and Bugs on the floor, still snoozing but perking up as much as his food coma would allow.

Adam looked nice today. His personal style had been getting more and more rustic the further their lives traveled from the military, and he was somehow looking sharp in flannel and cowboy boots. It was still a practiced casualness though, you could tell by how well-kept his silver hair was, pulled back from his forehead. His mustache was expertly trimmed.

He stared down his nose at the cat in a way that was impossible to read.

“Welcome home,” John said. “Good day at work?”

Adam hummed vaguely. His eyes finally rolled up to look at John with the same crypticness. He had a messenger bag, which he hung up in the entryway.

John fidgeted.

Adam stepped over to him and slowly put his arms around him—a nice surprise—slipping his hands into John’s jacket pockets. He removed the receipt and paper bits systematically, crumpling them up on the counter. The pill bottle he set upright by the sink.

“Aren’t going to take your coat off?” Adam asked. He glanced down at the huge splotches of water down John’s front.

“I was washing the, uh…”

Adam arched an eyebrow.

“The cat,” John finished.

Bugs stretched out his legs and finally slunk over to the two men, sniffing experimentally at Adam’s boot.

“Are you ok?” Adam asked, entirely suspicious, and John’s mouth twitched in an almost-smile. Oh. Well. If that’s all the problem was, he was in good shape…

“I’m fine. It’s not a weird episode or anything. I just found him, is all.”

The cat flopped across Adam’s foot, the epitome of laziness.

Adam smiled easily, large and lopsided, his eyes getting this softer quality like he was relieved or maybe just terribly fond. John decided he was a very lucky person.

“Always wanted a cat,” Adam said, finally looking away from John, down at their new housemate. He scooped the paper bits off the counter and deposited them in the trash under the sink.

“Thought you might,” said John.

x

That night, John dreamt of the cashier girl from PetCo, of all people.

It was a normal enough dream, except… well, the dream version was much meaner. The disgust on her face was evident, and she wasn’t ringing out his items, just staring at him with this expression like he was the most deplorable tiny speck of a thing. And he felt like it. He kept glancing at his items, mentally urging her to move them along, but she wasn’t doing it. It was an endless line of unchecked items piling up…

His glass eye started to itch, a strange sort of dream itch that went straight through his brain. His fingers scrabbled at the scar tissue. People were murmuring. Were they watching him? He was surrounded… They were at his back, but he couldn’t bring himself to turn around because in front of him was this face of disgust glaring him down.

What if he just tore his eye out? Suddenly he was desperately trying to stuff his fingers into the socket, sneak around the glass, but instead of pain it was just this intense itching, itching.

He couldn’t breathe. Bang b-b-bang! Gunshots, smoke, rubble. A warzone. Terrible things… He’d done terrible things and here they were written on his face for everybody to see, they could see it, they could see the people he’d killed and the people who’d tried to kill him, the dust of the battlefield sunk into his skin, BANG B-B-BANG, people murmuring, please don’t hate me, I’m sorry, I just want to survive…

He woke in a cold sweat, breathing hard, bare chest rising and falling heavily under the sheets. A cool bedroom with the creak of a ceiling fan… The alarm clock on John’s bedside table said 2:13. But Adam wasn’t on the other side of the bed, where he should be. The blankets were heaped onto John, and Adam’s pillow was cold.

Quietly, John went downstairs, in just his boxers and socks (his feet always got too cold at night, which drove Adam mad where cuddling was concerned). A flickering blue light and quiet murmur of voices from the living room told him the television was on. He approached slowly, watching from the doorway. Adam was sprawled across the sofa watching an old Western with their new cat curled up on his chest, petting Bugs absently with one hand. He was in a t-shirt and sweatpants.

It wasn’t a strange circumstance. John, he had nightmares. As for Adam, when things got bad, he just didn’t sleep at all. They both knew this was just a part of living at the moment.

John hadn’t made a sound, but Adam still lolled his head back over the armrest and looked at him upside-down. “Joining me?” he asked.

John made a gruff noise, and entered. Adam lifted up his legs and John snuck around them to sit before the legs fell again into his lap, his hand gently resting on Adam’s knees. Bugs mewed slightly at this jostling around.

“Bonding?” John asked, brushing the cat’s whiskers with a finger.

“Clint Eastwood is a good little guy,” Adam said.

It took a moment for John to realize this wasn’t an Eastwood film on the television.

“You’re naming the cat Clint Eastwood?” he asked, and Adam gave him a sleepy but still terribly sharp grin.

“It suits him right? Unless you have something better.”

Well. Clint was probably better than Bugs.

“Is it normal for cats to have last names?” John asked.

“Sure, why not?”

“I thought he’d have our last name.”

Adam snorted, closing his eyes. His warmth surrounding John so simply and easily was… nice. He could breathe easier here, with Adam across his lap. The quiet squeaky nose noises of Clint Eastwood as he snoozed. The cowboy movie… Righteous heroes in simple worlds.

Adam’s right hand was on Clint Eastwood’s back, and in the television light John could see the flickering reflectiveness of his wedding ring in its usual spot. John poked at it with his finger.

“What?” Adam asked, eyes still closed. It seemed he was getting comfortable, and no doubt hankering for sleep.

“Nothing,” said John, and he pet the cat.

They watched the movie on and off, both of them too tired to really pay attention. They fluctuated between alert commentary and simply zoning out quietly, wrapped up in each other and the quiet night. Finally, a few hours later, Adam fell asleep. Clint Eastwood and John both got up around then, equally carefully. The cat padded to the kitchen for some food, and John went back upstairs.

In the bedroom, instead of heading for the bed he went to his dresser instead, and opened the top drawer. The top drawer was for miscellany, sometimes socks… But also in the corner was a little box, and John opened it to look at his wedding ring.

He didn’t wear it… He worked too much with his hands, and he was always worried he’d ruin it somehow, or get it lost. So here it was in the sock drawer, something Adam liked to tease him about, but it was safe and comfortable here and John could look at it like this, his treasure that was too important even to touch.

It had been Adam’s idea to get married (of course, most things were Adam’s idea), and a part of John still wasn’t entirely sure that was real. They had, in fact, got married. They were, in fact, husbands and the Searses and lived together in a house. It was almost funny. It made him smile. But it was also a tender thing that existed somewhere deep in his chest, and he found himself almost hunching over, like he had to protect this soft part of his body.

He loved Adam, that was always something he knew, something that was simply a fact of life. Being loved by Adam, though, that was strange. He knew it was true because how could he not? Everything Adam did was for him, just a little bit. But it was strange nonetheless. To be loved by someone and so sure that they loved you, even when sometimes you didn’t know what could even be liked about you.

Adam made him feel human. Because he trusted Adam. He trusted Adam’s judgment. And if John disliked himself, he could at least remember that Adam loved him and that meant something in him was worthy of it.

He closed the box and the drawer, and scooped up the comforter off of the bed. Then he went back downstairs and tucked Adam in on the sofa, gentle. Adam had a little furrow in his brow in his sleep and John kissed it softly. He hoped Adam would have good dreams, or better yet, no dreams at all.

As for John, he went to make some coffee in the kitchen, where Clint Eastwood munched happily on kibbles.

“I guess you’re our kid now, Clint,” John told him. “I hope you like it here.”

Then in the quiet bubbling of the coffee pot, John realized Clint Eastwood wasn’t only munching.

In his little food corner, he had started rumbling his first happy purr.

John smiled.


End file.
